Clinical Leadership Characteristics

Personal Account

Discuss About The Clinical Leadership Characteristics Confirm.

The concept leadership is often difficult to define appropriately and means a range of things to varied people. A clinical leader is responsible for several tasks such as, designing, formulation, evaluation and implementation of the care services that are provided to the healthcare clients (Yukl 2013). This is usually achieved by delegating, coordinating, and supervising the care services that are delivered by the responsible healthcare team at a clinical level, in contrast to the administrative level. Furthermore, I also consider leadership as the behaviour of a person when he/she is responsible for directing the activities of the entire team towards a shared objective and/or vision. My knowledge and expertise has made me realise that there has been several inconsistent attempts to evaluate and assess leadership, due to the absence of a proper framework. Besides, the progress of a career in healthcare has conventionally been grounded on procedural and theoreticalaptitude at the outlay of ‘softer’ characteristics that underwritevirtuous leadership, such as, emotional intelligence (West et al. 2015). This essay will be a reflection of a personal story from my clinical placement during which I encountered a person with effective leadership skills. The essay will also be followed by an action plan, aimed at improving my future practice.

Personal account-The incident occurred during my clinical placement where I was placed to work with senior registered nurses at the Emergency Department of a hospital. This is where I encountered the nurse in charge and found her to be an exceptional and remarkable human being. I found that the nurse-in-charge had exceptional time management skills. This allowed her to plan and exercise adequate control of her time on nursing activities. This in turn helped her to increase her effectiveness as a nursing professional and also improved the delivery of optimal care services to the patients. This facilitated the process of placing complete concentration on what was being said to her, in place of passively hearing the speaker’s messages. This acted as a major boost and enhanced the communication that she engaged in, with all her service users and the key stakeholders (DeWit and O’Neill 2013).

Some of the other attributes of the nurse-in-charge that overwhelmed me were that she displayed extreme competence in making beds, for easing the pressure of other newly registered nurses. I also found her caring for the patients who were under the care of other nursing staff, in the absence of the latter. Besides, during the placement I also found her to liaise or form an alliance with different members of the multidisciplinarymedical team, in order to identify an accurate treatment strategy for the service users. This also helped her in coordinating the care services.

Evaluation of Experience

All leaders must recognise their values, in addition to identifying their importance of manifesting an ethical behaviour. This personal account helped me realise that the nurse-in-charge was a true leader in the sense that she exhibited both her ethics and values in her action and style. Without the presence of a strong culture to guide a leader in the process of decision making, appropriate values play an important role in affecting the effort put in by the worker/employee (Mannix, Wilkes and Daly 2013). The primary values that were evident in the practice and behaviour of the nurse-in-charge were related to temperament, passion, enthusiasm, and making an effort. According to the temperament theory, four basic personality types namely, choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic and melancholic exist in a person. The theory elaborates on the fact that most people tend to exhibit different aspects of their personality that is in accordance to these four temperaments (DeLisi and Vaughn 2014). The type of temperamental value that was exhibited by the nurse-in-charge was associated with choleric temperament. This can be attributed to the fact that choleric people are most commonly extrovert and have often been described as decisive, goal oriented and independent (Houben, Van Den Noortgate and Kuppens 2015). This is accredited to the circumstance that she took the initiative to deliberately organise the activities of patient care by calling the ward and reserving patient beds for transferring them to the respective wards. Besides, she also demonstrated the active listening skills while communicating diverse types of care demands that were required by her patients. Moreover, individuals with choleric temperamental values are also found to remain in charge of a particular group. This value was quite evident in the nurse-in-charge who demonstrated exceptional leadership capabilities and an ambition to care for the ill.

There is mounting evidence and statement that has identified passion as a core value that must be manifested by a leader for a successful enterprise (Savescu, M?rghitan and Orboi 2013). The value of passion often acts as an internal motivator and refers to the energy of work that comes from within a person. The fact that she demonstrated a passion towards serving the patients could be easily identified from her efforts and time management skills that were functional when she was entitled with the duty of delegating adequate roles and responsibility to other healthcare staff. Furthermore, I noticed that she was exceptionally good with her active listening skills. This displayed her earnest desire to gain a deeper understanding of the tailored preferences and demands of her patients, thus displaying her passion towards work (Weger et al., 2014). This value of passion was deeply held in terms of her priorities, convictions and assumptions, which in turn created a positive impact on her behaviour and attitude.

Role of Clinical Leader

Another principle value of enthusiasm was closely interlinked with passionand encompassed her positive anticipation and/or intense interest in formulating plans and ideas about patient care. She was found joyful and excited about her work. I always found her hold an optimistic and positive attitude towards her job. This in turn kindled her effort towards achieving the intended goals (Ljungholm 2014). She also took personal efforts to replace staff when they were found sick. The value of empathy also makes a person connect with one another, in order to gain an understanding and share the humanity. She was empathetic towards the staff under all circumstances and brought food for the entire team, in order to applaud them for their work, at times of nurse shortage.

Evaluation of experience- Clinical placements have the role of enabling all nursing graduate students to become competent and comfortable in a range of healthcare settings, thus facilitating the application of the acquired skills and expertise into nursing practice (Wright et al. 2018). An effective clinical placement was of utmost importance to my future nursing practice as it created the provision of recognising ways by which the theory can be applied to practice. Furthermore, it was also central to my preparation for entering the healthcare workforce as an independent and knowledgeable registered nurse. There is evidence for the fact that one of the major effects on graduate nurses selecting their first place of work is their undergraduate medical placement involvement; with optimistic experiences elevating the possibility of recently experienced nurses looking for a return to particular units (Jonsén, Melender and Hilli 2013). Hence, the primary impact of this placement was that it wanted me to work in the Emergency Department in my future practice.

Patient care has been identified as the cornerstone of efficient and superior quality clinical care services. Furthermore, most of the work that defines safety of patients and related practices that are formulated with the aim of reducing patient harm focus on the negative impacts of care service such as, morbidity and mortality. Contemporary infirmary care is challenged by workforce encounters, varying expectations and demands of the consumers(patients and their family members), monetary restraints, growing demands for entree to care services, a command to progress patient-centred care, and matters apprehensive of the care quality levels and patient safety (Udod and Care 2013). Effective leadership is thereforecentral to the efforts that need to be undertaken, with the objective of maximising operative administration of care in a clinical setting. Developing from this multifacetedconcern is the necessity for manifestation of adequate leadership skills in the clinical setting.

Attributes of Effective Clinical Leader

The significance of the placement can be attributed to the fact that it helped me to understand the benefits of a real clinical leadership in guaranteeing anextraordinary quality of healthcare system that unswervinglydeliversharmless and effectual care. I realised that some of the major problems that are faced across all healthcare organisations on a global scale encompass the struggle that is unable to meet the escalating healthcare costs and care burdens. Inefficiencies of the service designs, huge workload and lack of staffing are some of the potential contributing factors to this ever-increasing problem (Clissett et al. 2013). Besides the huge costs of healthcare services, the exist complexity in the diverse clinical environments. Furthermore, the services that are provided by majority of hospitals are controlled by several mechanisms that include the population demographics, government policy, and role of the service providers. Thus, I understood that effective clinical leadership is beneficial in ensuring the delivery of care services that are able to meet the values of both the organisation, as well as the patient. In the healthcare structure, it has been recognised that clinical leadership is not the élite domain of any precise skilled group (Scully 2015). Instead, all associates of a healthcare team should adorn the role of potential leaders.

The fact that I closely observed the nurse-in-charge during my placement at the Emergency Department helped me realise that it is an essential duty of nursing leaders to take an individual standpoint, and reflect optimistic outlooks towards their work. Besides, having the mettle and capability to contest the status quo, successfully report issues in care quality, and involve in a reflective practice are greatly beneficial in maintain patient safety and wellbeing (Démeh and Rosengren 2015). The experience was also beneficial in helping me understand that the leaders have the ability to influence their colleagues to enhance their clinical performance, in addition to motivating and supporting the latter. Moreover, it was understood that the combined action of informal and formal leadership by nurses is meaningfully allied to objective indicators of health such as, mortality, and patient satisfaction (Daly et al. 2014). Hence, a nurse who is an effective leader is virtually involved in all stages of patient care, and helps in enhancing patient outcomes.

Resonation- The placement helped me identify the different attributes and traits that I must acquire in order to adorn the role of an effective healthcare professional. I will take all possible efforts for enhancing my communication skills, displaying teamwork, problem-solving, interpersonal and analytical skills in future practice. It is imperative for a healthcare professional to be an active listener and pay attention to the specific wants and preferences of individual clients (Stanley 2014). I need to give adequate time to listen to the perceptions and opinions of the service users who are being provided care. The clinical placement also helped me understand that maintaining a positive attitude in the workplace will assist in creating an environment, where the visions of the organisation and the duties of a registered nurse can be easily accomplished. Healthcare leaders of tomorrow will be recognised as change agent for the organisation in which the world. This would require me to adopt a proactive approach and anticipate several challenges before they crop up in the healthcare setting (Wong, Cummings and Ducharme 2013).

Impact of Clinical Placement on Graduate Nurses

As a registered nurse I will also take efforts to stay abreast of the trends of the healthcare industry. The ever increasing costs of healthcare for the patients, providers, and insurance have been recognised as one of the driving concerns in health economics. My role as a registered nurse would encompass addressing this challenge in an efficient manner by taking into consideration multiple dimensions and providing optimal care services to the patients, in a way that reduces their length of hospitalization and subsequent healthcare-associated costs. Furthermore, the clinical placement also helped me identify the necessity to adhere to the standards for practice for an RN, formulated by the NMBA. I intend to show compliance to all the standards in future practice by engaging in a critical thinking and analysing the care that is being delivered to my patience (NMBA 2016). I would also strive to engage in a professional and therapeutic relationship, by providing support and advocating on behalf of my clients, thereby promoting a culture of safety. I also intend to learn the skills of conflict management by acknowledging the concern for all stakeholders and clients, while placing the clients first.

Conclusion

The key aspects of a leader involves taking efforts to influence a group in its activities and implementing effective strategies for coping with major changes.It is indubitable that to provide high-quality care steadily to patients needs, among many other features, upright medical leadership. When existing, leadership as a theme has often been articulated within other capacities, such as ‘competence’ and/or ‘communication skills’. The clinical placement facilitated the process of gaining an insight into the fact that hospital care stays on to bring in the majority of funding and entices substantial consideration in relation to quality of care that is delivered to patients. This clinical placement was crucial due to the fact that the quality of nursing education has been found to largely depend on the associated quality of the healthcare experience that we as nursing graduates attain. Thus, I would try to implement the skills learnt from the nurse-in-charge during the clinical placement, in my future nursing practice as a registered nurse.

SMART Goal:

To maintain a satisfying employment in a hospital organisation as a Registered Nurse by the year 2020.

Rationale for SMART Goal:

The rational for the SMART goal is associated with the fact that Registered Nurses have the duty of fulfilling a variety of job roles. Registered Nurses are defined as nurses who have recently graduated from nursing baccalaureate program and have met the eligibility requirements that have been outlined by a state, country, province, or other licensing body, in order to get a nursing licence. Besides the primary role of a Registered Nurse to care and treat patients, their responsibilities encompass providing patient education and creating an awareness among the public, regarding a plethora of acute and chronic medical disorders (Smolowitz et al. 2015). Owing to the fact that a Registered Nurse is also responsible for providing advice and emotional support to the service uses and their family members, the action plan would help me to fulfil all of these duties, within two years of joining a hospital.

 

Strategy	Actions	Support/
Experience (What will I do / what I have I done in the past that I can apply here?)	I will provide an accountable and transparent culture of patient safety and quality of healthcare services that embody excellent professional nursing practice.  I will also demonstrate compassion towards the patient and engage in delivery of person-centred care approaches.  I will also enhance my clinical practice and promote a positive culture at the workplace (1 year).	I will stick to the adherence of the organisation standards that will help in receiving and communicating nursing and midwifery related safety and sensitive data. I will require continuous consumer feedback for enhancing my practice (Kitson et al. 2013). Adoption of different models of care in response to the patient population will also help in the process.
Example (Who can I learn from and how will I do that? How will I adapt the example to my practice?)	I will learn from the senior Registered Nurses working in the same healthcare organization (8 months)	I will try to foster an effective rapport with the senior nurses, and engage in a cordial relationship with them that will help me gain a deeper understanding into the different duties of an RN and how to accomplish them.
Education (What sources of information can I access / use? How will I apply that to my goal?)	Published interviews with registered nurses and the documentation of the NMBA standards of practice will be essential in this respect (2 years).	Engagement in a reflective process will greatly facilitate this goal. Maintaining a reflective journal would also prove effective (Naber and Wyatt 2014). Reflective journal will enable me to manage the effect of caring for other clients on a regular basis, and will also help me to incorporate my experiences into daily practice.

 

References

Clissett, P., Porock, D., Harwood, R.H. and Gladman, J.R., 2013. The challenges of achieving person-centred care in acute hospitals: a qualitative study of people with dementia and their families. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 50(11), pp.1495-1503.

Daly, J., Jackson, D., Mannix, J., Davidson, P.M. and Hutchinson, M., 2014. The importance of clinical leadership in the hospital setting. Journal of Healthcare Leadership, 6, pp.75-83.

Conclusion

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Démeh, W. and Rosengren, K., 2015. The visualisation of clinical leadership in the content of nursing education—a qualitative study of nursing students’ experiences. Nurse education today, 35(7), pp.888-893.

DeWit, S.C. and O’Neill, P.A., 2013. Fundamental concepts and skills for nursing. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Houben, M., Van Den Noortgate, W. and Kuppens, P., 2015. The relation between short-term emotion dynamics and psychological well-being: A meta-analysis. Psychological bulletin, 141(4), p.901.

Jonsén, E., Melender, H.L. and Hilli, Y., 2013. Finnish and Swedish nursing students’ experiences of their first clinical practice placement—A qualitative study. Nurse Education Today, 33(3), pp.297-302.

Kitson, A., Marshall, A., Bassett, K. and Zeitz, K., 2013. What are the core elements of patient?centred care? A narrative review and synthesis of the literature from health policy, medicine and nursing. Journal of advanced nursing, 69(1), pp.4-15.

Ljungholm, D.P., 2014. Transformational leadership behavior in public sector organizations. Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice, 6(1), p.76.

Mannix, J., Wilkes, L. and Daly, J., 2013. Attributes of clinical leadership in contemporary nursing: an integrative review. Contemporary Nurse, 45(1), pp.10-21.

Naber, J. and Wyatt, T.H., 2014. The effect of reflective writing interventions on the critical thinking skills and dispositions of baccalaureate nursing students. Nurse Education Today, 34(1), pp.67-72.

Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia., 2016. Registered nurse standards for practice. Available from https://www.nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au/codes-guidelines-statements/professional-standards/registered-nurse-standards-for-practice.aspx Accessed on 17 September 2018.

Savescu, I.C., M?rghitan, A.L. and Orboi, M.D., 2013. The dynamic-energetic side of student’s personality and its role in school success. Research Journal of Agricultural Science, 45(4), pp.194-199.

Scully, N.J., 2015. Leadership in nursing: The importance of recognising inherent values and attributes to secure a positive future for the profession. Collegian, 22(4), pp.439-444.

Smolowitz, J., Speakman, E., Wojnar, D., Whelan, E.M., Ulrich, S., Hayes, C. and Wood, L., 2015. Role of the registered nurse in primary health care: meeting health care needs in the 21st century. Nursing Outlook, 63(2), pp.130-136.

Stanley, D., 2014. Clinical leadership characteristics confirmed. Journal of Research in Nursing, 19(2), pp.118-128.

Udod, S.A. and Care, W.D., 2013. ‘Walking a tight rope’: an investigation of nurse managers’ work stressors and coping experiences. Journal of Research in Nursing, 18(1), pp.67-79.

Weger Jr, H., Castle Bell, G., Minei, E.M. and Robinson, M.C., 2014. The relative effectiveness of active listening in initial interactions. International Journal of Listening, 28(1), pp.13-31.

West, M., Armit, K., Loewenthal, L., Eckert, R., West, T. and Lee, A., 2015. Leadership and leadership development in healthcare: the evidence base. London: The Kings Fund.

Wong, C.A., Cummings, G.G. and Ducharme, L., 2013. The relationship between nursing leadership and patient outcomes: a systematic review update. Journal of nursing management, 21(5), pp.709-724.

Wright, A., Moss, P., Dennis, D.M., Harrold, M., Levy, S., Furness, A.L. and Reubenson, A., 2018. The influence of a full-time, immersive simulation-based clinical placement on physiotherapy student confidence during the transition to clinical practice. Advances in Simulation, 3(1), p.3.

Yukl, G.A., 2013. Leadership in organizations. Pearson Education India.